[Chris]

Freemasons are an elite club who do favours for one another. You get invited into the Masons when you reach a certain height in society (eg. lawyers, magistrates, doctors, high-ranking members of the police, and especially ministers of the Government), and enjoy the favours of all other members. This is why a magistrate can expect his incriminating breath test to "disappear" and his heart bypass to mysteriously skyrocket up the waiting list.

[Jane Sherwood]

If they're so elite, why is there a Masonic lodge right on the main street in the tiny little pissant town neighboring mine?

Now that I think about it, according to my mother, my grandfather on my dad's side used to be a mason of the thirty-seventh rank (or thirty-ninth, somewhere up there) when he was alive, and he was a "pipe-fitter", whatever that is. Of course, this was fifty some-odd years ago in South Carolina, is it different over there or something?

[Supes]

And here I ask yet another stupid question for which I will most likely receive another sarcastic answer: what the hell is a freemason?

Somebody I know explained it to me before at some point, but I can't remember a word of what he said. I do remember a tiny bit of stuff from From Hell and at one point watching a Monty Python sketch involving someone wearing a giant pair of antlers, but that’s about it.

Here is a site that give a pretty reasonable run down of what the freemasons are. It looks at all sides.

Freemasons

[Rhubarb]

I always thought the point of Freemasons is that no one knows what they do except other Freemasons.

And I doubt a secret organisation controlling the world would be so well known.

I hypothesise that they are indeed pretty much like the Stonecutters... dress up in robes and drink beer and talk about how great it is to have a secret club.

[Icey]

That's the Beauty part Rhubarb.... they're so well known after Moore's From Hell, that we dismiss them like we do to aliens and UFOs after a few movies and TV-shows dealing with them.

[Rhubarb]

Er... people knew who Freemasons were long before that book.

LONG before.

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Freemasons are like.......boring.

[Rhubarb]

Hey, for all we know they might be having stripteases and Roman orgies inside their little temples.

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Well, they are not video-taping it and spreading over the net.

[Rhubarb]

OF COURSE NOT.

Freemason's are secret!

[Lachie Dazdarian]

They can wear masks and stuff.

[Rhubarb]

While they striptease.

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Lachie drools.